Five years before Nebraska even existed as a territory and permanent settlement became legal, Nebraska was crossed with heavily travelled trails and was even credited with a traffic jam.
Because Nebraska was also traversed with numerous streams and rivers, trails often were far from being straight lines, meandering many miles and several days’ travel out of the desirable “as the crow flies†path. Such a diversion brought the birth of Flora City, today known as Ashland.
In the early 1840s, though the Oregon Trail entered Nebraska from Kansas, much westward traffic first went north on the Missouri River or crossed the river from Iowa or Missouri, meaning trailheads began at Brownville, Peru, today’s Nebraska City, Wyoming, Rock Bluff and Plattsmouth. Because of the large number of north/south rivers and streams in their paths, freighters and settlers gravitated north 40 or 50 miles in an arc, to cross Salt Creek at a stone ford “as firm as a paved road†with gentle sloping banks at a spot known as Saline Ford.
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After crossing Salt Creek, the trail headed southwest on the south side of the Platte River, ultimately merging with the Oregon Trail east of New Fort Kearny. The shape of this road gave it the name of Ox-bow or Oxbow Trail though it was also known as Old Freighters road, California Trail, Mormon Trail, Military Road and Old Fort Kearny Road.
Because having the eastern terminus of the trails at Nebraska City/Old Fort Kearny was highly desirable to Otoe County, Alexander Majors of the freighting firm of Russell, Majors & Waddell, hired civil engineer Augustus Harvey to create a more direct route to New Fort Kearny.
To effect the trail a “sod breaking plow pulled by mules†was sent west following the path of least resistance. Termed the Oregon Trail Cutoff, the first wagon trains simply straddled the plowed furrow in 1861. Although much shorter, the old Oxbow Trail continued to be used because the new path was frequently on sandy or marshy ground and subject to problems during spring flooding, did not have the abundance of grass for the oxen, lacked fresh water, had more Indian problems, was not as plentiful with game birds and deer and obviously lacked the stone ford. By the 1880s however the railroad completely replaced use of the Oxbow Trail.
Without moving, the site of Saline Ford on the Oxbow Trail has been in three counties and associated with three city names. In the 1840s, when the crossing was named Saline Ford, the site was in Calhoun County, which was renamed and reconfigured as Cass County in 1862. With the establishment of Saunders County, six square miles was spun off from Cass County. In 1866 a post office application for Saline Ford was not approved as there was a perceived confusion with the existing post office at Saltillo.
That March, G. W. Fairfield surveyed the hill above the ford, naming and registering it as Floral City. The post office designation interests variously favored the names of Troy, Washington, Salinas and Parallel City in addition to Floral City but in November Ashland, named for Ashland, Kentucky, was accepted. Although Ashland was physically considered by many to be outside of Saunders County, it was named the original county seat, but the election of 1873 moved the capital to Wahoo.
In 1845 Israel Beetison immigrated from England to Massachusetts, moving to Nebraska in 1868 where he purchased 160 acres of land near the new village of Ashland. Six years later Beetison hired the Dalton brothers to build a home for his family on a hill about a half mile from the Oxbow Trail. The 1874 house was described as being of 18-inch-thick limestone quarried at South Bend and Louisville, two stories tall, containing 1,800 square feet with 10 rooms and a two-story Eastlake porch along the front, east side.
The house remained in the Beetison family for over a century but sold in 1999 with surrounding land to be utilized as a golf course. The extant house, now empty and boarded up, was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1977 and sits near Mahoney State Park awaiting renovation or razing.
Israel and Amelia Beetison’s daughter Ella married Charles Hempel whose daughter Hazel in turn married becoming Hazel Abel. Hazel Abel, Israel Beetison’s granddaughter, became president of Abel Construction Company in 1937, Nebraska Mother of the Year in 1957 and the first woman U. S. senator from Nebraska and the third woman senator in the United States.
The Ox-bow Bridge, completed in 1989 at the junction of Highways 6 and 63 sits near the site of the original Saline Ford stone crossing of Salt Creek on the Oxbow Trail whose swale/ruts are clearly visible east of the Beetison stone house.
Historian Jim McKee, who still writes with a fountain pen, invites comments or questions. Write to him in care of the Journal Star or at jim@leebooksellers.com.